I feel that the first two (lotto/death row pardon) are entirely bad luck and don't have much of anything to do with.... differences of expectation. So I'm surprised that 1 and 2 are leading. I will have to read up on irony on wikipedia...

@EK - I intended to follow up the replacement of knives with forks in my example with a comment on the superiority of sporks. But, I got caught telling a coworker the nostalgic story about the time my roommate and I made bronze sporks in college using the art department's sculpture equipment. We really knew the proper way to waste time back then, now I just spend time hunting for cartoon camping bear porn in off-day puzzles.